Developers are trying to keep selling offsets from hundreds of controversial projects through a revamped United Nations mechanism, sparking fears that worthless credits will allow companies and countries to pollute.
Climate Home analysis shows that renewable energy investments make up four-fifths of all projects seeking a transfer from the old Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to the new system under article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement.
Experts have long written off the vast majority of credits produced from renewable energy as junk because they often already provide the cheapest sources of power in most of the world and selling offsets to fund them does not have any additional impact on emissions.
Some of these projects have also been accused of human rights violations such as forced evictions for the construction of large dams.
Harry Fearnehough from New Climate Institute told Climate Home that “it could definitely undermine the credibility of the mechanism because, while there’s still uncertainty over what it will look like, as a starting point you have a huge supply of low-quality offsets that are potentially available at a very low cost”.
Established in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s CDM allowed rich countries to meet some of their climate obligations by financing emission-cutting projects in poorer ones.
The programme has received widespread criticism for its patchy human rights record and for failing to deliver promised climate benefits. Supporters of a new mechanism currently being developed under article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement say it is an improved, higher-integrity successor to the CDM.
Winning a lifeline
Countries are still wrangling over many aspects of the future market, but one much-debated issue was settled at Cop26 in Glasgow.
Under pressure from Brazil, Russia, China and India, countries agreed that a vast number of projects originally created under the CDM were allowed to migrate to the new mechanism. This handed them the chance to significantly extend their lifespan and their potential credit sales.
Project developers had until the end of December 2023 to fill in a simple two-page form and submit their transition requests.
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Of the nearly 3,500 eligible projects, over a third (1,284) seized that opportunity.
In total, the projects that have requested transition by the deadline could supply 700 million tons of carbon credits between 2021 – the start year for accounting purposes set by the regulation – and 2035, according to a preliminary analysis by NewClimate Institute shared with Climate Home. That is more than the annual CO2 emissions of Germany.
While a relatively small share of the projects opted in, they account for approximately three-quarters of the potential supply of carbon offsets.
That’s because some of the programmes seeking to move could produce an outsized volume of credits. The two biggest ones – a hydro plant and a nitrous oxide emission reduction scheme, both in Brazil – each have the potential to issue around 6 million tons of offsets a year. That’s similar to the annual emissions of Sierra Leone.
Fearnehough says that “very few, if any, of these credits are genuinely likely to be additional”, going beyond what countries would do anyway without the carbon finance.
“A key reason for this is that the CDM was really only scheduled to run up to the end of 2020,” he added. “No investor would have made a decision purely based on expecting revenues from credits in the 2020s because, quite simply, there was no political indication that the possibility to move over to a new mechanism would exist”.
Climate and social concerns
That is particularly true for the renewable energy projects vastly dominating the list. Experts say they are highly likely to fail the additionality test, meaning their credits do not bring any climate benefit. When used to compensate for real emissions elsewhere, they result in more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.
The reason is simple. Many renewable offsets came into existence just as solar and wind power were becoming the cheapest source of energy in most countries. After years in operation, they are likely to be profitable from the sale of the electricity alone, without the need for additional revenues from carbon offsetting.
A 2016 study commissioned by the European Commission concluded that the vast majority of these projects “are not providing real, measurable and additional emission reductions”.
The Jirau hydropower plant is located on the Madeira River, in Brazil. Photo: UHE em Jirau/Flickr
Hydropower projects carry even more concerns as their implementation is often marred by human rights problems. Vulnerable communities relying on rivers for their livelihoods are particularly at risk of forced displacement.
The largest project applying for the transition to the new mechanism – the Jirau mega-plant in Brazil’s Rondonia state – is a case in point.
Over the years the project has faced multiple accusations of stoking tensions, pushing indigenous people away from their territories and breaching the rights of the workers that built it. Engie, the project’s developer, previously rejected any accusations.
Other categories of activities featuring prominently on the transition list have raised major concerns in the past.
Credits from projects which claim to cut or stop the emission of industrial gases such as nitrous oxide (N20) and trifluoromethane (HFC-23) were banned by the EU in 2013 for use in its emission trading system.
That’s because, according to studies, they created “a perverse incentive” to increase the production of gases depleting the ozone layer.
Countries’ authorisation dilemma
While the CDM projects have now made their move and requested transition, they are not automatically through to the new system.
Standing in their way is the need to receive a formal authorisation to proceed from the countries where their activities are located. Governments have until 2025 to make a decision and, experts predict, it won’t be a straightforward one.
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“It’s not a guarantee that all host countries will want to approve all of these projects”, according to Jonathan Crook from Carbon Market Watch, who said there would be contrasting forces at play.
“If they authorise them, they have to do corresponding adjustments, which they might not be so keen on since those emission reductions will be deducted from their [NDC climate plans]. But, at the same time, most projects are located in very large countries and it may not make a big difference to their plans”.
The answer to this dilemma will rest primarily in the hands of China, India and Brazil. Between them, the countries host around three-quarters of all projects that are looking to migrate under article 6.4.
Spotlight on three countries
Observers of climate talks said their governments all pushed for rules that would grant a lifeline to as many CDM projects as possible when those negotiations took place at Cop25 in Madrid and Cop26 in Glasgow. But, since then, they have been conspicuously quiet on the topic.
Climate Home approached the respective carbon market authorities in the three countries but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Trishant Dev is a carbon market expert at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. He expects there will be “a lot of pressure on the Indian government to let projects through from the carbon industry, which is thriving in the country”.
But, at the same time, he thinks the government will take time to properly understand all the pros and cons of allowing such authorisations. “It’s a chaotic process. Countries want to make sense of what the final outcome of the article 6 discussions will be and how that will interact with domestic carbon markets they are constructing”, he said.
Who will buy the credits?
Article 6 talks collapsed at Cop28 last December after attempts led by the EU to introduce tighter controls and further integrity safeguards had been rebuffed by the US. Negotiators will try again this year to hammer out a deal on many technical issues that need to be resolved before trading of offsets can begin.
Meanwhile, questions also remain on who will be interested in using those credits, once the market is up and running. Countries, corporations and individuals could all be potential buyers.
New Climate Institute’s Fearnehough said there doesn’t seem to be much appetite from countries based on what they are saying in public. “But it’s hard to predict what will happen when suddenly the offsets are available and you have an easy option to meet your NDC targets”, he added.
The credits may gain more interest from polluting companies. Banks, airlines and industrial heavyweights keep buying large volumes of questionable renewable energy offsets despite the known concerns, a Bloomberg investigation found. Dressing them up with the UN stamp of approval may add to the appeal.
Carbon Market Watch’s Crook believes much will depend on the transparency of the system – something still largely unknown. “If there is a very transparent register disclosing who purchased how many credits and for what purpose, that would disincentivize companies from transacting low-quality credits out of reputational fears,” he said. “But if it isn’t transparent, buyers may not be as careful with due diligence or may be even encouraged to buy bad credits since there won’t be scrutiny”.
The post Junk offset sellers push to enter new UN carbon market appeared first on Climate Home News.
An Lambrechts is a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International with extensive experience in biodiversity-related multilateral negotiations. She is the head of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 happening in Yerevan, Armenia.
In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. With COP17 starting in Yerevan, we are now halfway to the deadline, and according to the first Global Review of progress, countries are not on track to meet the biodiversity targets, and implementation must accelerate fast.
One of the main findings of the Global Review is that funding falls far short of the scale needed to halt and reverse nature loss. But the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity is not an absolute scarcity of capital – it is a profound public policy distortion.
The global economy currently spends roughly $30 destroying nature for every single dollar invested in its protection. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a staggering $2.4 trillion is spent in public subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and water use, while global investment in biodiversity conservation and restoration stands at a mere $220 billion.
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Yet, discussions about how to close the biodiversity finance gap continue to claim that salvation lies in mobilising private capital, scaling offsets and “derisking” investments in nature. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of ecological stewardship and of the global financial architecture.
Biodiversity conservation is not a speculative investment portfolio – it is the foundation of human survival. The health of our planet is a non-monetisable, non-excludable public good. Expecting profit-seeking private capital to protect nature perpetuates the structural drivers of ecosystem destruction in the first place.
But if private market mechanisms cannot save biodiversity, where will the necessary public resources come from?
Money going to the wrong places
The answer lies in recovering the vast public wealth currently drained by cross-border tax abuse, financial secrecy and corporate impunity. Finance and environment ministers meeting in Yerevan must give a strong political signal that, to avert ecological breakdown, countries need to take swift action to reform global tax rules, eliminate harmful public subsidies and cancel unsustainable sovereign debts for the public revenues to end up where they belong.
Extractive sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, timber and mining continue business-as-usual, often heavily subsidised by public treasuries, while voluntary carbon and biodiversity offset markets pose a serious risk to nature conservation. Offset schemes have delivered only a negligible fraction of the funding needed to preserve ecosystems, allowing industries to continue with their destructive business-as-usual practices.
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In advanced economies, public funding often actively undermines biodiversity. In Europe, over €5.3 billion in public subsidies is funnelled annually into intensive forest biomass harvesting under renewable energy directives, degrading primary forest ecosystems and undermining long-term climate resilience. Pleading with private investors to fill a “finance gap” while pouring billions into ecological destruction is an exercise in futility.
Developing countries struggle with debt burden
For developing countries, reliance on private finance is further compounded by a crushing sovereign debt crisis. In 2024, public debt in developing economies reached record levels, with net interest payments alone absorbing $921 billion. A record 61 developing countries now spend more than 10% of government revenue on foreign debt service, with many climate-vulnerable nations spending twice as much servicing external debt as they receive in climate and biodiversity finance combined.
This burden acts as a structural driver of ecosystem destruction. Under pressure from external creditors and international financial institutions to avoid default and secure foreign exchange, governments are routinely forced into austerity measures and pushed to expand raw commodity exports into pristine biomes.
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The current negotiations for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) also offer a way forward. An estimated $492 billion in tax revenue is lost every year to offshore tax havens. Multinational corporations account for around $348 billion of this total by shifting profits away from the countries where real economic extraction and environmental degradation occur.
In the mining sector alone, developing nations lose tens of billions annually to corporate tax dodging. Furthermore, international financial secrecy shields environmental criminals, with illicit financial flows from illegal logging draining between $51 billion and $152 billion annually.
At COP17, leaders must seize the opportunity to build a bridge between the two conventions and enhance cooperation. Governments must put the world on a firm path to securing predictable, sufficient, sovereign public finance for biodiversity conservation. It’s the only path to a restorative, rights-based future for people and the planet.
The post Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity appeared first on Climate Home News.
Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity
Climate Change
Greenpeace delivers 47 metre-long petition with half a million signatures to Woodside HQ following major gas protest
Greenpeace delivers 47 metre-long petition with half a million signatures to Woodside HQ following major gas protest
PERTH, Monday 19 October 2026 — Dozens of Perth community members delivered a giant petition, signed by almost half a million people, to Woodside’s corporate headquarters this morning, calling on the government to save Scott Reef from Woodside’s reckless Browse gas proposal.
Dressed in sea creature costumes and hats, supporters carried one of Australia’s biggest environmental petitions to Woodside’s headquarters, and a local choir performed a ‘Scott Reef’ rendition of Angie McMahon’s iconic cover of ‘Reckless’ by Australian Crawl.
On the sidelines of the Perth Global Citizen Now event, it comes following a two day-long protest at Woodside’s Scarborough gas platform that saw activists scale and occupy the Floating Production Unit calling to “Stop Woodside’s Dirty Gas” and “Save Scott Reef”. The activists were taken from the platform by police helicopter on Sunday afternoon.
David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Less than a day after two Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists were arrested for their peaceful protest at Woodside’s Scarborough gas platform to save Scott Reef, we are here again with another message to Woodside: half a million of us do not want your dirty gas at Scott Reef.
“Community pressure on Woodside is rising. Today we are here to show Woodside that they can’t ignore half a million people who want Scott Reef protected, not turned into an industrialised gas zone.
“Woodside can’t be trusted with our oceans. Woodside’s plans to drill up to 57 toxic wells at Scott Reef, Australia’s largest oceanic reef, putting endangered pygmy blue whales at risk, and jeopardising a nesting ground for unique green sea turtles.
“We Australians love our oceans and this is an opportunity for our governments to do the right thing, to reject Woodside’s reckless drilling plans, and save Scott Reef.”
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Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or Emma Sangalli on +61 431 513 465
Climate Change
Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists in police custody after two-day protest against Woodside’s Browse gas project at Scott Reef
PERTH, Sunday 18 October 2026 — Two Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists are in police custody after occupying a gas platform at Woodside’s Scarborough gas project, in peaceful protest of the fossil fuel corporation’s plans to drill for oil and gas at Scott Reef.
NEW footage and photos of the peaceful protest available here and on Instagram
The activists used specialised climbing equipment to scale and attach themselves to a Floating Production Unit (FPU), a key piece of gas processing infrastructure at the Scarborough gas field over 200km off the coast of Exmouth, at around 05:45am AWST on Saturday and proceeded to occupy the platform for two days, displaying banners reading “Stop Woodside’s Dirty Gas. Save Scott Reef.”
Special police forces landed a helicopter on the FPU at around 11:30am AWST. The activists safely removed themselves from their equipment before being taken into police custody around 1:00pm AWST. At the time of writing, no charges have been laid.
David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “It takes guts and conviction to do what our activists have done, peacefully protesting Woodside’s reckless gas plans at Scott Reef.
“Woodside’s plans to drill up to 57 toxic wells at Scott Reef are outrageous. If allowed to go ahead Woodside would turn Scott Reef, Australia’s largest oceanic reef, home to nesting green sea turtles and elusive pygmy blue whales, into an industrial gas zone. Around half a million people have called on our governments to stop Woodside and to save Scott Reef.
“Our activists are highly trained and experienced in these activities. West Australia has a proud history of peaceful, democratic protest at sea, to protect our oceans from environmental threats. From whaling in Albany in the seventies, to Woodside’s threat to Scott Reef today, there’s more than fifty years of history, of Greenpeace taking action off WA’s coast to protect the places we love.
“Peaceful protest has long been part of what has given us so many of the things that are great about Australia and is part of the fabric of our democracy and our national identity.”
“The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to a healthy democracy. From Australia to the Arctic and the Amazon, Greenpeace has been peacefully protesting for more than 50 years to expose the biggest environmental threats around the world. We will not be silenced by corporations like Woodside who actively try to stop everyday people from speaking out against their reckless plans.
“Woodside’s reckless proposal to drill at Scott Reef is an unacceptable risk to Scott Reef and to the climate, which our government should emphatically reject.”
Speaking from the Rainbow Warrior, Captain of the Rainbow Warrior Hettie Geenen, said:
“It felt powerful watching from the Rainbow Warrior as these brave activists scaled Woodside’s enormous and imposing gas infrastructure, which has no place at Scott Reef. We are all out here because we feel an urge to act, in the face of Woodside’s grave threat to Scott Reef and to our climate. Now we ask for the Australian government to act too, and reject Woodside’s reckless Browse project.
“Just before this peaceful protest, the Rainbow Warrior sailed to Scott Reef, where our whole crew got to witness the magic of an untouched, healthy reef ecosystem full of marine life. It was my second time visiting Scott Reef with the Rainbow Warrior. When you see Scott Reef up close and witness its magic first hand, it is impossible not to feel driven to try and protect it.”
The activists sailed to Scarborough on the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s flagship vessel, which is in the region campaigning to protect Australia’s oceans, including Scott Reef.
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Media contact
Greenpeace Australia Pacific media team in Perth on +61 406 231 892 or +61 407 581 404 or email media.au@greenpeace.org
